mile, his eyes seemed larger,
clearer, even (by a queer delusion of sight) better set and wider apart.

"Yes, I'll show her that," he said in a low voice, with a new richness
of tone.

Old Maria looked up at him with an air of surprise.

"You do want her for that? As a help, I mean?" she asked.

His lips just moved to answer "Yes." Aunt Maria's eyes did not leave his
face. She remembered that when he had come before to talk about
contesting the seat in Parliament he had now won, there had been a
moment (poised between long periods of calculation and elaborate
forecasts of personal advantage) in which his face had taken on the same
soft light, the same inspiration.

"You odd creature!" she murmured gently. "She's handsome, I suppose?"

"Superb--better than that."

"A swell?" asked old Maria scornfully.

"Yes," he nodded.

His aunt laughed. "A Queen among women?" was the form her last question
took.

"An Empress," said Alexander Quisante, the more ornate title bursting
gorgeously from his lips.

"Just the woman for you then!" remarked Aunt Maria. A stranger would
have heard nothing in her tone save mockery. Quisante heard more, or did
not hear that at all. He nodded again quite gravely, and turned back to
the window. There were two reasonable views of the matter; either the
lady was not what Quisante declared her, or if she were she would have
nothing to do with Quisante. But Aunt Maria reserved her opinion; she
was prepared to find neither of these alternatives correct.

For there was something remarkable about Sandro; the knowledge that had
been hers so long promised fair to become the world's discovery. Society
was travelling towards Aunt Maria's opinion, moved thereto not so much
by a signally successful election fight, nor even by a knack of
distracting attention from others and fixing it on himself, as by the
monstrous hold the young man had obtained and contrived to keep over
Dick Benyon. Dick was not a fool; here ended his likeness to Quisante;
here surely ought to end his sympathy with that aspiring person? But
there was much more between them; society could see that for itself,
while doubters found no difficulty in overhearing Lady Richard's open
lamentations. "If Dick had known him at school or at Cambridge----" "If
he was somebody very distinguished----" "If he was even a gentleman----"
Eloquent beginnings of unfinished sentences flowed with expressive
freedom from Amy Benyon's pretty lips. "I d